The Housing Bubble Is Still Raging In These 20 "Buy-To-Rent" Cities, And Burst In These 20 Others

Earlier today we reported that the nearly two year long scramble by Wall Street asset managers to gobble up distressed and other properties, most often subsidized by the government using various REO-to-Rental funding structures, with the intention of renting them out and in the process generating a 15%+ annual ROI, is now officially dead in such former hotspots as California where America's biggest landlord, private equity firm Blackstone, reported that its purchases in California are down a staggering 90%.

RealtyTrac admits as much when in a report released overnight showcasing the Top and Bottom 20 markets for rent-to-reo "flipping", it shows that the annual gross yield on most California (and Colorado, and Virginia, And Montana) cities is now at most 5% - something no self-respecting market rigging institution would bend over for. Of note, the worst market by far when it comes to rental yield is none other than New York City, where one can get a better return investing in Treasurys than buying real estate with the intention of renting out.

Then again, we are talking about institutional investors, filled to the gill with both Other People's Money and the Fed's Zero Cost debt. The same "investors" who, having run out of prime markets in the US are now scrambling to buy up real estate in Europe (although how the local dynamics of 25% in youth unemployment will translate into rental cash flow is one of those great mysteries of life).

Well, not so fast. Because as the following table also by RealtyTrac confirms, the US still has an abundance of "own-to-rent" cities, where one can generate a return as high as 30% in one year, if one is willing to drive through the downtown area at 65 mph. Places like bankrupt Detroit, where the median sales price is $45K, and somehow the average market rent is $1.1K, meaning one can recoup their investment in just over 3 years! (how Detroit's residents can afford $1K on rent is another of those great mysteries of life)

In other words, the housing bubble will still be raging in these 20 cities, at least until such time as the yield drops sufficiently due to soaring prices that the Blackstones of the world are forced to dump other people's money in such undervalued places as Ulan Bator and Almaty.

Finally, a heatmap summarizing the few remaining places where the second US housing bubble in under a decade can still flourish is shown below.

2004/2005 back in the days when my own little California shithole was getting daily junkmail offering refi at $360k for the shack I bought at $75k in 1998. When I see that offer again, I'm selling this piece of shit and renting. Because I now know that the next crash will be permanent.

RT might claim it is raging but from the builder's point of view, they smell a top in the dead cat bounce. We're seeing signs of lending requirements tightening up even more and existing homes sitting on the market longer. With the Florida program to accelerate foreclosures there is a new, larger wave of dead properties about to add to the inventory and the hedge funds know it (as documented by ZH) and are bailing out of buying down here. The only buyers are the speculative suckers who got their asses reamed in 07-08 and didn't learn a damned thing.

A RAND study pours buckets of cold water on the Obama administration’s claims that it has nearly reached 7 million sign-ups for Obamacare. The whole point of Obamacare, supposedly, was to insure the uninsured and bend the cost curve down. Those who had insurance were supposed to be able to keep it. Families were supposed to start saving about $2500 a year. If you believed the Obama administration.

Reality, according to RAND‘s study, is that the Obama administration’s 7 million figure is deceptive. Supposing 7 million have actually signed up and paid their first premium — which is not a given, as the administration claims it does not know how many have paid — two-thirds of those who did sign up already had insurance before Obamacare.

Four days prior to the sign-up deadline, the AP was reporting polling data showing approval for ObamaCare was as low as it has ever been, including as low as it had been just before it was adopted.

But in the space of those four days, the press, including the Washington Post and LA Times, etc., were reporting polls showing support for ObamaCare had miraculously edged out the opposition: 49% approving, 48% disapproving.

“'The debate over repealing this law is over': Obama boasts 7.1 MILLION have signed up to Obamacare - but study shows just 858,000 newly insured Americans have paid up!”

It seems that with Obama’s second term the mainstream press – the networks and eastern newspapers in particular – have passed on from bias to statist media, supporting every lead taken by the Obama Administration, including actually manufacturing polling data and manufacturing statistical data – such as these signups.

Americans need to transfer to the Internet to keep some semblance of awareness as to what’s actually happening in the nation. The mainstream press as it blends into State-owned media is operating much as did the former Soviet news outlets; that is, it has become the voice of the government. As government lies, they lie.

Well, I guess I don’t buy your premise. It’s a pretty unlikely possibility. We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.

Absolutely Detroit is a great market! They have a buy two get three free special for the reasonable price of $6500! What a steal! And they're guaranteed to have had less than two murders committed on premises! For real bargain hunters you can score a former meth house for less than a $1000.

I know you're loading the tools now. Gonna flip some homes in Detroit!

Neither Sandy Springs (Fulton County) nor Marrietta(Cobb County) are in Clayton County as the chart says. The average home value in Sandy Springs is almost $400,000, not $50,000. Marrietta average home value is about $200,000. Average home value in Clayton county is $120,000. So that's more inline. I do know a guy still selling condos to Blackstone.

just reinforces the fallacy of statistics. what good are averages without knowing SD?

Plenty of reasonable 85K bargains in the shrinking lower end blue collar neighborhoods. The city has over 40,000 ABANDONED houses (out of 300K +/- units). Whole blocks are empty ghost towns. Those that do sell are 30 to 40K, but most built pre 1950, be prepared for lead and asbestos abatement, and a mile of red tape. We don't want any of those silly civilians trying to buy and fix them up and actually having somewhere to live. Instead we'll provide housing vouchers and ship them to the suburbs.

MEANWHILE, along the shore and harbor the tax credited/deferred funded glittering towers of the local elites are pushing 1M +. Government gives developers tax credits to build, paid for by tax payers. Developers sell the credits at a discount to brokers, who sell to their rich clients. And people cant figure out why the rich are getting richer and everyone else poorer.

Who wrote this article? "San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont"? I think they meant "San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose". Fremont is a place you drive through on your commute to San Jose/Cupertino/Mountain View. No one chooses to live in Fremont.

FFS why would any report use median house prices, but average rents? After all, if they have the data to calculate the average, they have the data to obtain the median.

Both rents and house prices are skewed, and pretty significantly so. Forming a ratio of the mean of one distribution with the median of another, makes no fucking sense whatsoever - it gives you a statistic that has no sensible interpretation.

The statistics in the RHS (which obviously assume 100% occupancy rates and no agency or other costs) basically amount to saying "If you bought a house at median prices, and can rent it out at average rents, then your return will [...] X%" - what is the appropriate word to fill [...]?

Will be X%? Only in a world of zero uncertainty.

Will average X%? Only in a world where the average of the ratio is equal to the average realised rental yield (which implies strong - and unrealistic - conditions on the sampling distributions of the median price and mean rent... massively unlikely with the skews observed in housing data).

No. More likely, the appropriate replacement for [...] is a phrase... namely "Will lie somewhere on the number line: another number on the number line is" X%.

Fucking pointless 'pseudo-statistics' and pseudo-analysis... it's fucking everywhere, from this piece of statistically nonsensical shit, to the new secular religion of the left - climate 'science' - which now purports to say meaningful things about the impact of 'climate change' on medium-run agricultural output... yet none of the practitioners spouting this is a bajillionaire from accurately predicting grain and other ag futures.

And don't get me started on the Left jumping all over the output of quant climate models and treating the point forecasts the generate as if they're fucking stone tablets from Yahweh: it's fucking infuriating, given that the Left's hatred of quantitative economic models borders on the pathological. Quite amazing, given that climate is orders of magnitude more complex than economic interactions (economic interactions are relatively simple, but there's a lot of 'em - which is where the complexity comes from).

And now the 'climate' scaremongers are forecasting climate-induced economic effects - feeding a pretty pathetic economic model, with the central-tendency estimate from a non-bijective climate model in which most important parameters are imposed (and the sensitivity analysis is so rudimentary as to be worthless), and forecasting over timeframes where the forecast bounds widen like a fucking ear-trumpet.

Get this down: the parasitic sociopathic motherfuckers in the global political class want to tax energy. They want to tax it because demand for energy is highly inelastic. And they have no shortage of charlatans - "true believers" and ordinary rent-seekers - willing to line up to have an entire career on the climate-propaganda closed-shop research-grant gravy train.

All good and very right, except that in my place (and many others around the globe) it has been getting steaily warmer for 30+ years, and not only here. The real question regarding warming is do what degree (%-age) is the current warming trend due to CO2 incrases in the atmosphere, and to what degree to other/natural causes. My personal (and professional) opinion is that "some" of the warming is highly likley due to increases in CO2, but it's definitely not 100%. But governments do like to tax, and energy tax - founded or unfounded - makes no exeption. Anyway, finite resources, be it fossile energy, gold ore, farmland, or whatever, is a bitch to the eternal economic growth fantasy. Time and natural selection sorts out everything unnecessary in the long run. Bottom line (it') is a dirty business.

Close to 40 million Americans move from one home to another every year. Click anywhere on the map below: blue counties send more migrants to the selected county than they take; red counties take more than they send.

Did they really put Palatka FL on the list that city is the ugliest group of people I've ever witnessed in my life. When you start to roll into the town everyone starts blaming each other for shitting them self but then the windows come down and one soon realizes the rancid shit smell is eminatting from the town itself. The locals are immune to it. Whichever analyst created this data needs to pay visit then we can chat about gross income in palatka.

District of Columbia - What a great place for investment property. The revolving door of assholes that come through that place provides no shortage of renters. The renters have money. Lots of dirty money.

Harold Bray in an article this past September reported on welfare statistics from a CATO Institute study on what the average welfare recipient receives.

In California, housing assistance averaged $1,235 per month ($998 in rural areas, $1,472 in urban areas). …The Contra Costa Housing Authority list Section 8 grants for the County as $1,225 for a two bedroom home, $1,711 for 3 bedroom home and $2,099 for a 4 bedroom home plus utility assistance for “heating, cooking, other electric, air conditioning, water heating, water, sewer, trash collection, refrigerator and range/microwave”.

Reports CATO: “Only 42% of welfare recipients are working (nationally and in California) and many of those with jobs are actually not working, but are participating in job training or 'job search'. Fewer than 20% have unsubsidized private-sector jobs.”

Blackstone bought all those homes and has sweet connections to make sure they get paid the $1100 a month with government subsidized payments.

Where do you think the rental security idea came from? You couldn't guarantee a rental security with working people paying, but welfare recipients with guaranteed government income tranfers make the perfect tenants if you only care about getting paid.

I have owned an apartment complex for many years and we are currently experiencing the largest number of vacancies we have ever had. Many houses in the area are empty or under leased. In 2005 and 2006 prior to the housing collapse many people were looking at second homes, for investments or as a vacation getaway.

Today not only have many people shed the extra home many have doubled up with family or friends reducing the need for housing. We are pushing on a string and calling it demand when someone who can barely pay the rent is encouraged by the government to buy a house they can neither afford or maintain. We have a shortage of "qualified" buyers and renters. More on how low interest rates are hurting housing in the article below,

In downtown Cleveland every building must be made available for low income individuals. Even $10k a month luxury apartment buildings. In the rental agreement there is actually a section that says a tenant can't be turned down because of inability to pay. For the apartments with low income individuals they would pay around $200 and the government would kick in the rest of the rent.

Of course it worked like a lottery, but some lucky crackhead got to live in the building I had my office in. The rent was $5k a month, and every day ot looked like gang meetings were going on.

Of coursr with all the welfare cash, finding $200 for rent isn't that hard. You get the added bonus of seeing every handicap spot in cleveland filled with a Lexus or Cadillac driven by a middle aged black woman who walks just fine, but is somehow disabled.

I've owned a lot of rental houses. To make money off the rents you have to work for your money. You're always getting nickeled and dimed with a big hit every once in a while. You need home values to go up to really make it worth while.